1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system. In particular, the present invention relates to an improved method and system that utilize objects. Yet more still more particularly, the present invention relates to an improved method and system that utilize objects for managing network devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
The manipulation of data in a data processing system is well known in the prior art. Data may be manipulated in many ways in a modern data processing system including: data accessing, data decoding, data communication, data compression, data conversion, data entry, data exchange, data filing, data linking, data locking, data mapping, data modeling, data recording, data sorting, and data transferring. The large amounts of data which are available to the user of a modern data processing system often become overwhelming in magnitude and complexity.
As a result of the increasing complexity of data processing systems, attempts have been made to simplify the interface between a user and the large amounts of data present with in a modern data processing system. One example of an attempt to simplify the interface between a user and a data processing system is the use of a so called Graphical User Interface (GUI) to provide an intuitive and graphical interface between the user and the data processing system. The Common User Access (CUA) user interface is one example of such a GUI. "Common User Access" is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. The CUA user interface is often employed to organize and present large amounts of data to a user in a graphical and intuitive manner. One situation in which large amounts of data may be presented to a user involves modern distributed data processing systems.
Modern distributed data processing systems, also called networks, may consist of hundreds or thousands of computing devices of varies kinds, often manufactured by different vendors and interconnected by many types of transmission media, including telephone lines, satellites, digital microwave radio, optical fibers, or digital data lines. They may include local or wide area configurations. Administrators managing a network require an ability to determine the status of the various computing devices within the network in order to monitor and manage resources within the network. Currently, an administrator may view various components within the network in the form of nodes or icons displayed at the administrator's station. As the number of nodes (computers or other data processing systems) increase, the display becomes more cluttered and information is harder to discern.
As noted, a data network may consist of literally thousands of non-homogeneous devices. Many such devices have primitive capabilities relating to reporting their internal statuses (e.g., available memory, data throughput). However, because the devices are non-homogeneous, their reporting capabilities tend to be non-homogeneous also. As a result of the non-homogeneity of the reporting capabilities, network management utilizing such nonhomogeneous reporting capabilities tends to be very bandwidth and computing intensive.
That is, due to the inhomogeneity, received data typically requires additional manipulation, thereby making device management using such data computationally intensive. Furthermore, such inhomogeneity also tends to require that device management needs to be done at one or more centralized locations by computational devices that "know the whole picture" or can aggregate such inhomogeneous data into a coherent whole. Also, one additional difficulty exists in that the reported status information cannot be aggregated in any way to reflect user priorities, in that the non-homogeneous devices' reporting capabilities are typically a pre-defined set, from one any particular user (network or device manager) must work.
In light of the foregoing, it is apparent that a need exists for a method and system which will facilitate network or device management and monitoring in a decentralized way that reduces computational and bandwidth inefficiencies and allows a user to define what status information will be kept and reported.